I have been experimenting with cars for almost 23 years now.  My first projects were what I call heavy metal.  Cars of the eighties were definitely heavy but they had the serious cubic inches and power to move them.  So it wasn't uncommon to have a car that could turn 10 second quarter mile times consistently.  But a bad effect of trying to push so much heavy metal was very poor gas mileage.  So in the late eighties I graduated from heavy metal to foreign compacts.

My first lightweight bruiser was a 1978 Triumph Spitfire.  I designed it from the ground up.  I started by totally disassembling the car down to every nut, bolt and screw.  If it didn't look new I replaced it with new.  I sandblasted the frame and body which was rust free to begin with.  I treated the frame and then sprayed it with Daytona Yellow.  I sat the frame on blocks and went to the drawing board.

I did a fair amount of research on popular V6 engines of the eighties and their respective possibilities.  I came up with the Ford/Capri 2.8L  -90deg V6.  Most people do not know that this engine is a very close relative of the infamous Ford Cosworth V8 race car engine.  There is still a non-functional hump which runs along one side of the V6 engine block which used to house a counterbalance shaft in the Cosworth V8.  In the eighties you had to spend an un-surmountable sum of money to turn 8,000 RPM out of a V8 engine.  I was able to spend under $7,000 1985 dollars and build a 8,000RPM engine which produced nearly 300 hp.  Now this doesn't sound like much because today's engines are a totally different breed.  In the eighties we were struggling to gain 1 hp per cubic inch.  Nowadays most all engines in production street cars produce 1 horsepower per cubic inch or better.

But the speed from the Spitfire project car didn't come from massive amounts of horsepower.  I was very quick to learn that horsepower-to-weight ratio was the key.  The finished Triumph spitfire tipped the scales just above 1,400 lbs dry weight.  Put 300 hp into a 1,400 lb car and you basically have a crotch rocket.  Everything that wasn't essential to piloting the car down a straight line from a starting line launch was cutaway and discarded.  The only luxury it had in bare dry weight racing form was a set of pneumatic lifts for the front hood.  They were necessary because with the inner fender wells cut out the lift front end was too flimsy to lift without some sort of assist.  But the lifts were lighter than the fender wells and excess metal I had cut away.

The engine started as a 1970's model Mercury Capri 2.8L V6.  I originally opted for the automatic transmission but later discarded that to save weight and keep nasty hydraulics off all my nice paint work.  I replaced the auto with a very stout 4 speed tranny.  The engine started by getting totally hot tanked.  In the eighties the EPA didn't have a say in what kind of hazardous chemicals businesses could use and so the mixture they used could practically strip the chrome off a bumper.  Engines came out of the vat looking like a brand new casting.

I had picked the best local machine shop in Clovis, NM to do all of my machine work on the engine.  They started by boring the block .030 over and line-boring the block and aligning the crank on a special machine.  The crank machine would remove material where a main journal was high and TIG weld in the low areas to perfectly line up the main journals.  In a stock engine the crank main journals are rarely ever perfectly in-line and that causes a bit of horsepower robbing friction and un-necessary engine wear.  I had the block deck milled and a few oil passages were modified for more oil flow to the mains.  I built up the bottom end with nothing but the best parts.  I used TRW double moly rings and TRW 10.5:1 forged slugs.  I was one of the first customers to have my crank balanced by a new state-of-the-art lazer balancing machine.  It used a lazer to detect even the slightest off-balance.  The machinist told me that he could get the crank, pistons, rods, flywheel and harmonic balancer down to a total imbalance equal to the weight of a dollar bill.  So I offered him 40 dollar bills if he could get it down to zero imbalance.  He got it very close and so I gave him the tip for his extra time.  He also lightened the flywheel for me.  I had already removed the counterbalance nodes from the rods and he just made it all work together in harmony.

The heads got a mild porting job and a fresh three angle valve job.  I added some aftermarket double valve springs which were supposed to be good up to roller cam ranges.  I installed the highest lift and longest duration cam that could be used without going with a roller cam.   I purchased some special lightweight hollow chromoly pushrods to push the valves open.  Crane made aluminum direct drive cam gear set for the 2.8L and so I had to have that as well to replace the stock cast iron gear set.

I had quite a time trying to find an aftermarket manifold for the 2.8L since not much performance aftermarket pieces were available.  I finally contacted a good source with Offenhauser and they said they had a special one of a kind manifold casting sitting on a shelf in a warehouse collecting dust.  They said it still required some machine work since it never made it out of the warehouse.  I said I would take it.  I got it machined and it did require a very rare 390 cfm holley double pumper.  It was so rare that it cost me $400 1985 dollars.  That is probably around $1000 2005 dollars.  Then I had $180 worth of specialized machine work done to the double pumper to match it to the now 2.9L bored out V6 displacement.

For ignition I had a Accel Super Yellow high voltage coil, Accel Super Yellow wires and a Mallory distributor.  I had to fabricate my own equal length 3 into 1 headers with the help of a local custom exhaust shop.  I had my own personal welder who did a lot of my welding  since he was so good at it.  I wanted total structural integrity and I trusted his welding better than my own.  We fabricated motor mounts and a new dropped cross-member undercarriage for the radiator support and bottom out protection.  We had to notch the frame on both sides to allow the 3 core 1953 Willies Jeep radiator to drop down low enough to clear the tilt front end.  I installed dual electric fans to keep it cool.  I had originally used a crank mount but opted for the electric because of the complexity of fabricating a fan shroud for efficient cooling.  My welder helped me to create a custom built drive shaft.  I stuck with the stock 4:11 gear rear end pumpkin.  I made a custom tranny tunnel out of fiberglass and did all of the interiors myself minus the seat re-upholstery.

I laid carpeting and vinyl where needed.  I re-covered the dashboard-hood with a good vinyl.  I made a new instrument panel from grade A white ash and then coated it with poly and hand rubbed until it had a buttery smooth feel and awesome look.  For gauges I found that an older model Fiat Spyder had very nice looking Italian Veglia Borletti gauges in it.  I found a good set and then totally disassembled them and restored them to their original grandeur. 

I did all the bodywork myself to include removing the marker lights and filling the holes with silver soldered steel patches.  I then removed the stock tail lights and fabricated two black ovals with two round tail lights for each side.  They looked very Ferrarish.  I removed both bumpers and supporting framework and fabricated fiberglass bumper snubbers for the front of the frame rails which extended out from under the front of the hood and also housed the tilt front end hinges.  I stole the shaker hood from a Formula Firebird, turned it around backwards and molded it into the hood for clearance of the 390 CFM double pumper.  After I completed the body work and added a Porsche 930 whale tale I took it to a local paint shop where they sprayed it with Centari 1985 Porsche Red.  And WOW did it look hot.

The car looked absolutely amazing and performed even better.  I had the fastest car in town until a friend of mine dropped a race built 403 into his 1970's model AMC AMX which was 2600 lbs of pure brutality when he pumped the nitrous into it's veins.  But I did once hold the throne for a while.